Pardee Center Hosts Meeting for Faculty Research Fellow’s Leaf Emergence and Fall (LEaF) Project

Richard Primack, a Professor in the Department of Biology and a Faculty Research Fellow at the Frederick S. Pardee Center for the Study of the Longer-Range Future, convened a working group meeting for his Pardee Center project known as Leaf Emergence and Fall (LEaF) on March 17.

Initiated in the autumn of 2016, the three-year project’s goal is to bring together a wide range of researchers from different universities in eastern Massachusetts to collaborate on the impact of climate change on tree phenology. Understanding the effects of climate change on tree phenology has implications for forestry, the update of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, movement of water into streams, the water table and the atmosphere, and the ecology of a wide range of animals.

The most recent LEaF meeting at the Pardee Center included 18 participants from Harvard, University of Massachusetts at Boston, the National Phenology Network, and Boston University. The meeting included an informal lunch and discussion, followed by nine lightning seminars of five minutes each, and finally an hour of informal discussions.

LEaF has already organized two such workshops, and will organize one each semester for the next two academic years. In addition to workshops, LEaF will provide summer stipends to teams of 2-3 grad students and post-docs from different research groups who want to begin a new collaboration relating to a research project, a grant proposal, or a review article. Following the meeting, an announcement will be made detailing how to submit proposals for collaborative work.

Click here to learn more about LEaF.